Is the weekend the best time to buy bitcoins? I've lots of people say the price dips a bit at the weekends. Should I wait until Saturday or Sunday to buy my small amount of bitcoins from Intersango or does it not matter really?
Here's a thread with discussion on the topic:
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http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63312.0There is a pattern where if Bitcoin is in a downtrend, even a short-term one (where the current week's high is lower than the previous week's high), then over the weekend the exchange rate will often be lower than it was earlier in the week. The concept behind it is that miners and others can sell 24/7 but speculators and investors moving funds from banks cat only add those funds during the week.
For the past couple of weeks, that downtrend has not continued. Thus conditions aren't ripe for a "weekend dip" this particular weekend. It could still happen, just that the weekend dip strategy doesn't suggest this weekend as being one where there is a consistent pattern that might be considered for trading. Also there have been times when the biggest rallies happened on a weekend. For a speculator intending on making a big buy, what better time to put a ton of cash to work by catching other buyers unprepared to compete for those bitcoins.
Of course, many patterns are eventually recognized and traded against. So just as this pattern used to see swings of at least 5% and often times 20% over the weekends, lately we are seeing 2% to 5% and less even.
This is expected as we now have the ability to move cash between several exchanges (which helps to make all exchange markets more efficient, fewer arbitrage opportunities) to easily buy on margin and to short bitcoins (e.g., Bitcoinica), to buy and sell CALL and PUT options (e..g., MPEx) and to take advantage of all the other financial innovations.
tl;dr: Bitcoin is maturing and its future may not look anything like its past.
